Report of an early Alumni Association of the Harvard 
Law School— Written by William H. Winters for 
the Boston Newspapers and amplified with History 
of the School for the Cincinnati Gazette. 



A meeting of the students and resident graduates of 
the Harvard Law School was held in the library room of 
Dane Hall, on the evening of the twenty-second of June, 
1868 for the purpose of proposing a plan for the organiza- 
tion of an association of the past and present members of 
the school. At this meeting were present Moorneld 
Storey, Arthur Geo. Sedgwick, John Q. A. Brackett, William 
Blaikie, John J. McCook, George W. Dillaway, John M. 
Palmer, Henry T. Wing, Edward J. Holmes, Clark B. 
Montgomery, Marshall P. Stafford, Nicholas Fish, George 
H. Bates, Roswell H. Jerome, James Kilbourne, Theodore 
H. Tyndale, Charles H. Tweed, Vespasian Warner, Edward 
P. Nettleton, Addison Thomas, Edward 0. Brown, Samuel 
E. Williamson, Edward G. Stetson, Charles W. Clifford, 
Edward C. Ames, John L. Thorndike and many others. 

A Committee was appointed to make arrangements for 
a second meeting, and to prepare an address to the older 
members of the school, inviting their attendance at, and 
co-operation in, the proceedings of the subsequent meeting. 

Agreeably to such instruction, the following circular 
was prepared and issued by thf Committee: 

Cambridge, June 25, 1868. 
Sir: — The many pleasant, pgllonal and local associations which 
ordinarily grow out of the asserJpling together of young men, for the 
purposes of education and general culture, have often suggested to the 
members of the Law School of Harvard University a desire to adopt 
some means of keeping alive an interest in each other's fortunes and 
success in life, and in preserving those relations of personal regard 




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George S. Hillard, by the appointment of Ex-Governor 
Emory Washburn as Chairman. 

Governor Washburn on taking the chair, made a state- 
ment of the objects of the meeting, and expressed himself 
as heartily in favor of the establishment of an association of 
the character proposed, believing that the existence of such 
an organization would advantageously affect the prosperity 
and influence of the School ; that it would be a bond of sym- 
pathy and union between the members of the profession in 
all parts of the Union, who have enjoyed the advantages of 
a legal education at Cambridge, and would assist in securing 
the success of those important principles, and objects to 
which the attention of the Alumni had been called in the 
circular. 

On motion of Mr. Edward Gray Stetson, Mr. William 
Huffman Winters was appointed Secretary. 

Hon. Charles Theo. Russell moved that the meeting 
proceed to the organization of an Association of the School 
as proposed. The motion was carried. 

On motion of Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., it was voted 
that a Committee of five be appointed to draft a Constitu- 
tion. The Chair appointed as members of said Committee, 
Messrs. Dana, Lathrop, Wright, Brackett and Babson. 

During the absence of the Committee letters were read 
in response to the circular from Judge George Hoadly. 
Cincinnati, Gen. George F. Shepley, Portland; Hon. Elihu 
B. Washburne, Washington, D. C. ; Wendell Phillips, 
Boston; John Lothrop Motley, Boston; William W. Story, 
Rome, Italy; Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, Columbus, 
Ohio; Judge Nathaniel Holmes, St. Louis, Mo.; Hon. 
Andrew G. Magrath, Charleston, S. C. ; Hon. Charles A. 
Peabody, New York City; Hon. A. Oakey Hall, New York 
City; Judge Marcus Morton, Prof. Theophilus Parsons, and 
others. 

Addresses relating to Law School recollections of the 
days of Story were made by James Russell Lowell (Class of 
1 841) ; Hon. George S. Hillard (Class of 1832) ; Hon. Richard H. 



Dana, Jr. (Class of 1840); and by other gentlemen, and 
those who have listened to Wendell Phillips at his best, or 
Lowell in the lecture room, or Hillard in private conversa- 
tion with Hawthorne, Sumner or Choate, or Dana in his bar 
address on the occasion of Choate 's death, may gather some 
idea of the exquisite pleasure enjoyed by the audience from 
an intellectual feast in which seductive and melodious 
word-sounds seemed "on golden hinges moving" while illus- 
trating a theme in which all had a peculiar common interest. 
The Committee on the Constitution, through their 
Chairman, Mr. Dana, made their report which was adopted 
as follows : 

CONSTITUTION OF THE HARVARD LAW 
ASSOCIATION 

PREAMBLE 

The past and present members of the Dane Law School of Har- 
vard University unite to form "The Harvard Law Association," having 
in view, among others, the following objects: To maintain and 
advance the character of the Dane Law School, — to promote its gen- 
eral welfare, to revive the pleasing memories of common legal studies, 
to secure the highest moral and intellectual standards for the legal 
profession, and to purify it from sectional and all other narrowing 
influences; also by cultivating a mutual respect and an agreeable 
social intercourse among its members, to become the medium of a 
sound public sentiment upon matters outside of the strict limits of 
professional duty, and to create and strengthen those relations which 
ought to subsist between educated men whose position gives them 
influence over the life and thought of the country. 

Article I — Of Members 

All who have been connected with the Law School, either as pro- 
fessors or students, shall be of right members of the Association. 

Article II — Of Officers 

Section 1. The Officers of the Association shall be a President, 
five Vice-Presidents, a Recording Secretary, a Corresponding Secretary, 



a Treasurer, and an Executive Committee; all of whom shall be elected 
at regular meetings of the Association to serve for the term of two 
years. 

Section 2. The President shall preside at all meetings, and per- 
form all the other duties usually incident to that office. 

Section 3. The Vice-Presidents in the order of seniority shall, in 
the absence of the President, perform his duties. 

They shall be elected from each of the New England, Middle, 
Southern, Western and Pacific divisions of States. 

Section 4. The Recording Secretary shall have charge of all 
records of the Association, shall make and keep accurate minutes of all 
meetings, shall prepare and preserve, as accurately as may be, a record 
of all members of the Association, with the year in which they left the 
School, their residence, the public positions which they may have held, 
and any other matters of interest concerning them. He may in his 
discretion appoint in any State an Assistant Secretary, whose duty it 
shall be to collect and forward to him any statistics in regard to the 
members of the Association in that section of the country. 

Section 5. The Corresponding Secretary shall conduct the cor- 
respondence of the Association. 

Section 6. The Executive Committee shall consist of five mem- 
bers, by election, residing in Massachusetts, and the Secretary and 
Treasurer, ex-officiis. 

Article III — Meetings 

There shall be a meeting of the Association every year, at such 
time as the Executive Committee shall appoint, who shall have author- 
ity to call special meetings, with such notice as they shall deem suffi- 
cient. 

Article IV — Amendments 

This Constitution may be amended at any regular meetings of 
the Association by a vote of two-thirds of those present. 

Upon the adoption of the Constitution, a committee 
on permanent organization, composed of Messrs. Russell, 
Lowell, Thomas, Clifford and Bates were appointed. 

The report of the committee was accepted, and the 
following members were selected as the officers of the 
Association for the first term: 

President, Hon. Benjamin R. Curtis, Massachusetts; 
Vice-Presidents, Hon. William M. Evarts, New York, Hon. 



George Hoadly, Ohio, Hon. Charles Bradley, Rhode 
Island, Hon. Ogden Hoffman, California, and Hon. Andrew 
G. Magrath, South Carolina. Recording Secretary, Hon. 
John Lathrop, Boston; Corresponding Secretary, Charles C. 
Read, Boston; Treasurer, Wm. I. Bowditch, Boston; Execu- 
tive Committee, Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., Hon. George 
S. Hillard, Henry W. Muzzey, Esq., Frank Goodwin, Esq. 
and John F. Smith, Esq. 

The following resolution was unanimously adopted* 

Resolved, That the members of the Association are 
earnestly recommended to form auxiliary local clubs in 
the States and principal cities of the Union to assist in pro- 
moting the objects set forth in the preamble to the Consti- 
tution. 

On motion, the meeting then adjourned. 

Hon. William M. Evarts of New York City was sub- 
sequently selected to deliver the oration at the first meeting 
of the Association to be held at the Parker House in Boston 
in June 1869. 

The Law School of Harvard University was organized 
by the appointment of Isaac Parker, Royall Professor of 
Law, on September 4, 181 5. On May 14, 181 7 Asahel 
Stearns was appointed University Professor of Law. In 
1829 a generous bequest by Nathan Dane, the author of 
the Ordinance of 1787, enabled the corporation to establish 
the Dane Professorship of Law, and for many years after- 
wards the School was known as the Dane Law College of 
Harvard University. Joseph Story was induced to accept 
the Dane Professorship on June 3, 1829 and he held it until 
his death on September 10, 1845. 

Among its first students were Rufus Choate and Caleb 
Cushing, both of whom acquired distinction in the class 
room of the School and in its Moot Court and Parliament. 

It was early noticed that Judge Story's favorite pupils 
were Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, George S. Hillard. 
John Lothrop Motley, William M. Evarts and Richard H. 
Dana, Jr. 



Sumner was librarian of the School for a time and a 
lecturer on International Law. He and Hillard edited the 
American Jurist from 1834 to 1840. They eventually 
formed a law partnership and at one time had as a student 
in their office Mr. William W. Story, a son of the Judge, 
and who afterward attained distinction as law writer, 
essayist, poet and sculptor. Hillard was regarded by Walter 
vSavage Landor and by John Kenyon as the most brilliant 
conversationalist they had ever met. He was a close and 
much trusted friend of Daniel Webster and was immortal- 
ized by Hawthorne by references in the Custom-House 
sketch of "The Scarlet Letter," and in the prefatory 
matter of "Mosses from an Old Manse." He was also an 
intimate friend of Longfellow, Everett, George Ticknor, 
George Wm. Curtis, the historian Prescott, and especially of 
Rufus Choate who alludes often to Hillard 's delightful 
talks whether in public or to a more select audience of two 
or three. Hawthorne speaks of himself in his Concord 
life "as having grown fastidious by sympathy with the 
classic refinement of Hillard 's culture." 

He is the author of a book of travels "Six Months in 
Italy" still of interest and classic authority. 

NOTE— "The 'Moot Courts' were almost always held as sittings 
in banc. But I remember that, on one occasion Judge Story organ- 
ized and presided at a nisi prius trial. The case was an action upon 
a policy of marine insurance and it turned upon the question of a total 
loss. The jury was composed of twelve students, drawn from the 
Divinity School. I forget how the evidence showing the loss was 
introduced, but I presume it must have been presented in depositions, 
borrowed probably from some actual case. 

My distinguished and beloved friend, the late Hon. George S. 
Hillard, is the only one of the Counsel whom I remember as taking part 
in the trial. He "led" on one side or the other. He closed an impas- 
sioned peroration by exclaiming, 'Gentlemen of the jury, the verdict 
is mine! / will have it!' Yet I am quite unable to say how it went. 
But I know that a great deal was taught in those 'Moots,' in which all 
the forms were punctiliously observed." — 

Benjamin R. Curtis. 



Motley was a stylish young man and in the School, 
after the manner of his beau ideal Byron and whom he so 
much resembled in personal appearance — Lady Byron once 
said that he was a perfect image of her husband— he was 
accustomed to wear a turn-over collar that showed a throat 
as white and smooth as a woman's. 

One of his college contemporaries writes of him — "He 
was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, but little did any 
of us imagine that the handsome boy would ever live to 
study Dutch and write the history of Holland." 

In the Latin School, the College and Law School he 
was very intimate with Wendell Phillips and Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. At the University of Gottingen he became an 
acquaintance and friend of Bismarck, the future great 
German statesman, and he was a frequent visitor to the 
latter' s rooms on the Wall- Promenade and in the house of 
the tailor in Rothe Strasse not far distant from the Hotel 
Krone and just off the Weender Strasse. 

Everett, Bancroft, Ticknor and Calvert were writers 
in Gottingen and here Longfellow as student-writer com- 
menced his Pilgrimage of the "Outre-Mer." Motley also 
wrote here his novel of "Morton's Hope" in which one of 
the student-characters was Bismarck. 

NOTE— In 1875 the publisher of the Public Ledger in Phila- 
delphia having sent Prince Bismarck a cane made from the wood of 
Independence Hall, the latter acknowledged the gift in the following 
letter : 

"Varzin, July 4, 1875. 

Dear Sir: — You have had the goodness to send me, as a support 
to my old days, a cane made from the tower from whose heights, 
ninety-nine years ago, the bell was rung for the first time in honor of 
that great commonwealth whose ship bells now sound their full and 
welcome tongue in all harbors of the world. For this historical treas- 
ure, I beg you to accept my heartiest thanks. I shall honor it, care- 
fully preserve it, and with other relics of remarkable years, bequeath 
it to my children. This day is one of those which always recall to my 
mind the happy hours that I have spent on many a Fourth of July 
with American friends, the first time with John Lothrop Motley, 
Mitchell G. King and Amory Coffin, in 1832, at Gottingen. 



9 

I only wish, my dear sir, that you and I could always be as sound 
and happy as we four lusty fellows, when, forty-three years ago, we 
celebrated the Fourth of July at Gottingen.'' — Von Bismarck. 

Motley was later on a fellow-lodger with Bismarck in 
Berlin at No. 161 Friedrich Strasse and in after life in 
Brussels and The Haeue he wrote in manv octavo volumes 
his histories 'The Rise of the Dutch Republic" and the 
"History of the United Netherlands." 

Judge Story was so much pleased with a brief prepared 
by young Dana in a Law School Moot Court case that he 
carried it to Washington to show the Judges there what his 
boys were capable of. Dana in after life was the distin- 
guished counsel in the Anthony Burns Fugitive Slave case, 
the Kalloch trial, the Dalton Divorce case in which he 
was opposed by Choate, the Prize and the Halifax Fisheries 
cases. He was the author of the famous "Two Years 
Before the Mast" written in early manhood and securing him 
the unbounded admiration of Dickens, "The Seaman's 
Friend" and a book of travels "To Cuba and Back". He 
is also the editor of the Standard Edition of Wheaton on 
International Law. 

Dana wrote an interesting account of his Law School 
life that was printed in Story's Life and Letters, and in one 
of his early letters occurs the following: 

"The most successful speech made at the school during 
the whole time I was there, was made before a jury of under- 
graduates, Judge Story on the bench, by William M. Evarts. 
A law argument which he introduced into it, addressed to 
the Court, was the most complete, systematic, precise and 
elegantly spoken law argument I have ever yet heard, 
including many arguments of our most distinguished coun- 
sel before our highest courts. Indeed Evarts has been a 
peculiar young man at school, college, and in professional 
studies. If he does not become distinguished, he will 
disappoint more persons than any other young man I 
have ever met with." 



10 

It is curious to note the extraordinary influence and 
fascination exerted in pro-slavery times by the Southern 
law students. 

Phillips frequently alludes to them and is believed to 
have been a convert to their views on the slavery question 
up to the time of his marriage. There are those, listening 
to James Russell Lowell's reminiscences of his Law School 
days, who noticed that he never failed to speak of the bril- 
liant Southerners of his time. In fact he seldom mentioned 
any other of his contemporaries. Like Phillips and Holmes 
he seems to have fallen an easy victim to their literary 
culture and charming magnetic personalities. Edward 
Everett Hale in his Harvard reminiscences refers to one of 
his idols a southern law student. 

Alas, that the kindly feeling of School contact and 
intimacy should have been shattered and dissipated for a 
time by the bloody episodes of the Civil- War when charm- 
ing young Southern Knights of the School went down in 
numbers in the Pickett charge at Gettysburg, and Northern 
romantic figures like the dashing Cavalry Leader Colonel 
Minor Millikin in the whirlwind charges at Stone River and 
elsewhere. 

And so long ago it was written in the Book of Genesis — 
"And Abram said unto Lot, let there be no strife, I pray 
thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and 
thy herdsmen; for we be brethren." 

At the Dedication of the Dane Law College in 1832 
Mr. Wendell Phillips and Mr. Benjamin F. Thomas were the 
chosen representatives of the students of the College, and on 
the occasion of Judge Story's death in 1845, Mr. Anson 
Burlingame presided at a meeting of the students of the 
School that was held in the hall of the Parliament. 

Addresses have been delivered before the School and 
printed by Judge Story on his inauguration as Dane Pro- 
fessor of Law, by Judge Story on the death of Professor 
Ashmun, by Josiah Quincy on the Dedication of the Dane 



11 

Law College, by Rufus Choate on "The American Bar," 
by Professor Greenleaf on the death of Story, by Professor 
Joel Parker on the death of Webster, and by Professor 
Parsons on the death of Choate. There were also printed 
a lecture by Professor Parsons of reminiscences of dis- 
tinguished lawyers, and in 1858 an address before Parliament 
by a student Mr. John P. Jackson of Newark. 

In 1 85 1 Hon. Rufus Choate addressed the "The Story 
Association" of the Law School. 

In 1867 Hon. Richard H. Dana, Jr., delivered a course 
of special lectures on International Law, and in 1868 Pro- 
fessor Parker delivered by request of the Students a lecture 
on the "Dangers to the Constitution." 

In 1868 there was prepared in manuscript by William 
H. Winters an elaborate and complete Bibliography of the 
Dane Law School. 

Among the distinguished lawyers, jurists, statesmen, 
diplomats, brilliant orators and men of literature and art 
enrolled in the Dane Law School membership have been 
Caleb Cushing, Rufus Choate, Benjamin R. Curtis, Wen- 
dell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
John Lothrop Motley, George Ticknor Curtis, George S. 
Hillard, William M. Evarts, Richard H. Dana, Jr., William 
W. Story, Rufus King, Rutherford B. Hayes, Emory Wash- 
burn, George Hoadly, Elihu B. Washburne, John Wentworth, 
Anson Burlingame, James Russell Lowell, Henry James, 
Willie Winter, Francis Parkman, A. Oakey Hall, Joseph 
H. Choate, William G. Choate, James C. Carter, John L. 
Cadwalader, Ogden Hoffman, Everett P. Wheeler, Robert 
Todd Lincoln, Fletcher Webster, William Everett, Alexander 
H. Bullock, Marcus Morton, John Jacob Astor, Charles J. 
Bonaparte, Minor Millikin, Edwin A. Parrott, William Kent, 
Richard Olney, J. L. M. Curry, George F. Shepley, Sidney 
Webster, Henry A. Cram, George Bliss, Addison Brown, 
Gunning S. Bedford, John D. Townsend, Larz Anderson, 
Sidney Bartlett, Chas. A. Peabody, James M. Smith, William 
Preston, Sam'l G. Arnold, Austen G. Fox, Peter B. Olney, 



12 

Albert Stickney, William H. Hurlbert, Charles G. Loring, 
Benjamin F. Hallett, George W. Smalley, Melville W. Fuller. 
George M. Towle, Wm. P. Whyte, E. Rockwood Hoar, 
George F. Hoar, etc. 

If all Greek literature and art — statuary, architecture, 
drama, poetry, history, oratory and philosophy were 
destroyed or banished from the world, there would be left 
little of superior interest or merit. 

In the Greek States were organized and developed 
every possible form of City and State Governments, and 
Athens itself was the source and home of all modern ideas. 
So if you strike out of American law literature the con- 
tributions of the Professors and graduates of the Harvard 
Law School there will be but little left of merit or worthy 
of more than mere mention.. 

Its contributions are those of Simon Greenleaf, Nathan 
Dane, Emory Washburn, Caleb Cushing, Luther S. Cushing, 
Francis Hilliard, George Ticknor Curtis, Timothy Walker, 
Theodore Sedgwick, Asahel Stearns, George Bemis, William 
Whiting, John Appleton, John G. Marvin, George Bliss, 
Joseph Willard, Peleg W. Chandler, J. C. Perkins, John 
Lowell, George F. Betts, Henry D. Sedgwick, John J. Putnam, 
Francis H. Upton, Richard H. Dana Jr., Theophilus Parsons, 
William W. Story, Joseph Story and so many others of that 
remarkable class. 

The Harvard Law School is the classic Salamanca, 
Bologna, Oxford or Gottingen of America and well worthy 
of the admiration, love and devotion of the Story pupils — 
the Choates, Sumner, Phillips, Hillard, Dana, Evarts, 
Burlingame, King and Hoadly. 

It is the type and true sHiccessor of the old Litchfield 
Law School and as Reeve, Gould and Calhoun have been 
and are identified with Litchfield — so Story, Greenleaf, 
Washburn and Parsons will be associated always with the 
name and fame of the Cambridge School. 

William H. Winters, 

Boston, July 15, 1868. - Class of 1868. 



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